Shanghai: High turnover in Chinese ports

Our colleague Pan Hua, Head of the Hamburg Liaison Office China (HLO), describes the current situation in important Chinese ports.

As a result of the economic restrictions imposed by COVID-19, an unusually large number of reefer containers accumulated in the Tianjin port, the largest port in North China and main port in the Beijing region. With investments of around 13 million Chinese yuan (around 1.7 million euros) the port's reefer container storage capacity was increased by 80 percent within a short-term expansion and renovation of available space. In February and March, 43,000 imported reefer containers were handled there, more than in any other Chinese port. Port operations in Tianjin are back to pre-crisis level. Since the end of February, free inland waterway shuttles have been providing daily support to companies in the hinterland. Since March 27th there have been further discounts in feeder traffic. A new service connects Tianjin and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

The Qingdao port in the east China’s Shandong province is largely unaffected by the epidemic: by March 26th, this year's handling volume of the automated terminal grew by 6.5 percent compared to 2019. The transport volume by rail reached 138,000 TEU in February, which corresponds to an increase of 31.2 percent compared to the previous year. In response to the corona crisis, the port of Qingdao digitized many of its services. Since the beginning of March 143 international liner services have been reinstated.

The Ningbo-Zhoushan port in east China's Zhejiang province also documents crisis security. During the coronavirus expansion in China, the port was operating in normal mode. The handling volume in the first quarter corresponds to that of 2019. As a result of its focus on the development of multimodal transport, 28.4 percent more containers were handled between rail and ship in the Ningbo-Zhoushan port from February 21 to March 21 than in the previous year, a total of 71,838 TEU. By March 20, the crisis management team deployed by the port organized the re-deployment of around 18,000 truck drivers from around 1,600 truck logistics companies. The total throughput in the first quarter is estimated at Ningbo Zhoushan with 252 million tons to be about 99 percent of the production from the same month last year.

The Shanghai port reports an increase in transhipment between sea and inland waterway vessels as a result of the landside transport restrictions at the beginning of the Corona epidemic. In February, for example, the share of inland waterways traffic for the terminals in Yangshan rose from 50 to 70 percent.